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Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics

CCRMA Open House 2018

We are in the midst of planning our Open House, which will be held on Friday March 2, 2018. Join us as we present lectures, hands-on demonstrations, posters, and musical performances of recent CCRMA research. Come explore the historic Knoll and see what we've been cooking up!
The Open House will run from 10am-noon, and 2-5pm. The detailed schedule and list of events are being ironed out now, so keep your eyes on https://ccrma.stanford.edu/ccrma-open-house for the latest info on what will be on offer. Hope to see you there!

Summer Workshops 2018 Announced!

Summer 2018 just got a whole lot cooler: our amazing lineup of computer music workshops has been announced! Check out the schedule here

Recent Events

Oakland based Zachary James Watkins will perform an evening of solo music for guitar, electronics, and devices. Among many other things Zachary studied composition with Janice Giteck, Jarrad Powell, Robin Holcomb and Jovino Santos Neto at Cornish College. In 2006, Zachary received an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College where he studied with Chris Brown, Fred Frith, Alvin Curran and Pauline Oliveros. Zachary has received commissions from Documenta 14, the Kronos Quartet, The Living Earth Ensemble, sfsound and the Seattle Chamber Players among others.

I would like to engage in dialogue around my past works and current concerns. I will share a few compositions and discuss current practices and techniques. Over time my output for new through composed works has focused on site specificity, individuals, economy of resources. I often attempt single page scores and I always try to write for specific individuals and rooms if at all possible. Strategies designed to investigate high vibration resonance. My works also explore new tunings and I currently play a Just tuning on an equal tempered guitar fret board. Fuzzy intonation refers to the constant tension between sensitive intervals. As an improvisor I explore form and do not shy away from structured pre-compositional controls.

Abstract: After commercially releasing a number of VR MIDI controllers and a physical multidimensional foot controller I'll share my development process, findings from observing hundreds of musicians use them and feedback from customers. I'll highlight common pitfalls and discuss how multidimensional control can help make new expressive instruments but also combine with traditional instruments to enable deep live effect control.

Recent News

Way to go, Dr. Selfridge-Field! Very interesting article about her work with master musicians suffering from dementia.

From the article: At first glance, she was elderly and delicate – a woman in her 90s with a declining memory. But then she sat down at the piano to play. “Everybody in the room was totally startled,” says Eleanor Selfridge-Field, who researches music and symbols at Stanford University. “She looked so frail. Once she sat down at the piano, she just wasn’t frail at all. She was full of verve.” Read more here...

All kinds of new buzz in being generated by our own Jonathan Berger's latest opera My Lai. Congratulations, Jonathan and the Kronos Quartet!

"In My Lai, a monodrama for tenor, string quartet, and Vietnamese instruments, composer Jonathan Berger had countless tragic elements at his disposal... In this immersive performance, we had the sense that, rather than defaulting to the story's obvious tragic details, Berger illuminate a single, more subtle element - the outraged bewilderment we often feel in the face of unimaginable horror."